one hot ass couple
by TheHighestMountain
Summary: Five times Rosa Diaz thought she was falling for Gina Linetti & one time she was certain she was already doomed. Based on the quote: "you know, in another lifetime, you and I would've made a hot ass couple". Completed.
1. girl you caught my eye

**One - girl you caught my eye & now i can't stop looking**

The first time Rosa Diaz laid eyes on Gina Linetti she thought what is up with that woman's face. Gina had makeup smeared all over her face and was pulling off an extreme duck pout. "Gina Linetti." She introduced herself. "Art made human."

Rosa should have known that it would be a long, slippery slope into infatuation.

A very long slope. Gina Linetti manages to reach before unknown levels of hilarity and annoyance in Rosa's eyes.

Rosa had known Gina for years. But she never really noticed her, not really, not until Captain Holt came to the precinct and made Gina his personal assistant. Rosa had been too busy before that. Too busy trying to become accustomed to the life of a police officer, too busy clawing her way up the totem pole in a mostly male environment.

She was also very busy trying to keep her private life private from the gossip mill that was the precinct. Particularly the gossip mill known as Jake Peralta.

It's surprisingly time consuming to move house and change habits every six months, but at this point Rosa has it down to a fine art. Maybe that's why she finally had time to notice that, yeah, Gina Linetti really is a work of art.

It's not that she hadn't noticed Gina at all before Holt. Because who couldn't? The girl was an exploding firework: beautiful, vibrant, and she drew the eyes of everyone around her. Gina Linetti was a proper little weirdo. You couldn't escape her.

She was constantly around. Gina was filming ridiculous Youtube videos in the break room when Rosa wanted five minutes to chill out. Gina was setting things on fire and barking orders at Hitchcock and Scully when Rosa was trying to take a nap at her desk. Gina was constantly making noise. It was infuriating. It made Rosa want to punch things.

But all those years and Rosa never really noticed Gina, never really saw past the glamour and the glitter and the terrible dance moves to see a glimpse of the real person beneath. Not until Rosa agreed to help Amy convince a bunch of at-risk (read: loser) kids to be "student snitches".

"Fiiiine." Gina sighs dramatically from over in the corner. The most notable thing about her eavesdropping their conversation is that she puts down her phone on the desk. Rosa, arms folded, turns around to look at her, eyebrows raised. "I guess I can help you with those at-risk kids."

"I don't need your help." Amy retorts. Damn, Rosa thinks as Gina's eyebrows shoot up and her posture somehow becomes sassier but yet she doesn't seem to move. This is gonna be good.

"It's nothing personal." Amy catches the look on Gina's face and instantly becomes flustered. "It's just that you're not a cop. So I'm not really sure how you could help."

Gina looks like she could happily blowtorch off Amy's hair. It's a sexy sort of look.

"M'kay." Gina picks at the skin beneath her nails. "No hard feelings. But I hate you. Not joking. Bye."

Rosa forgets about this little interaction until Amy's perfectly prepared speech about the value of police work and how everyone can contribute positively to society somehow ends up being taken over by a bunch of fifteen year olds chanting "BLACK PEOPLE CAN SELL DRUGS". They are, of course, led by none other than Gina Linetti.

Rosa has to admire her balls.

Or, you know, her more feminine parts. Not that Rosa is thinking about Gina's feminine assets. Or Gina at all, really. Her mind is totally fixed on taking the piss out of Amy. Yeah.

"I did not think getting these kids to sign up would be this hard." Amy admits to Rosa as they stand outside the conference room, staring in at the kids.

Rosa scoffs. It's obvious to her what the problem is. Amy is uptight, serious, and dresses like a sixty year old lawyer. She doesn't speak the language of the streets, of the wild child. Not like Rosa does.

"They don't identify with you because you aren't from the streets. I am." Rosa fixes her battle glare on her face. That glare has made countless grown men freeze up, prevented hundreds of awful, awkward social interactions on the streets, and famously once made a criminal run head first into a mailbox. He knocked himself out.

"Follow. Watch. Learn." Rosa marched back into the room.

Her theory is quickly blown right out of the water and nuked in orbit when Rosa's words end up being remixed right back at her. That takes her by surprise. There's even a surprisingly little tear pooling at the corner of her eye. She isn't used to being made fun of. It's made even more embarrassing by the sight of Gina bopping along to the terrible music.

So they have to suck it up and go crawling to Gina. Well, Rosa lets Amy do the crawling. And the begging. Rosa is sure this is a waste of time. Why would Gina help them when she could sit around blogging or playing Candy Crush or doing whatever else it is that she does all day?

Rosa would like to say that this is one of the few times that she was proven wrong. But it isn't. Being wrong over and over, doubting yourself, it's all part of being a detective.

But it is odd how that smirk seems to light a small fire inside her chest.

"Sure I'll help you out honeybun. Cops are the worst." Gina swans into the conference room like she owns it, speaker in hand. Rosa has no idea what she plans on saying.

That brief spark of attraction is promptly doused to ashes by Gina's terrible dance moves. To the sound of Christina Aguilera's Beautiful comes some sort of weird gymnastics routine, butterfly impressions, and moves that can only be of Gina's own creation. It's awful. All Rosa can do is stare.

It was the first time Rosa had really seen Gina Linetti. And now that she'd started, she couldn't seem to stop.

* * *

Thanks for reading! This is my first Brooklyn Nine Nine fic, hope you enjoy.


	2. I take bad girls to bed

**Two - i take bad girls to bed**

Rosa lets out a primal battle roar. She pulls a four inch serrated knife from her boot and stabs the desk in frustration. Once. Twice. On the third stab she leaves the blade in the wood, the handle vibrating from the force, and stalks off to the kitchen.

Angry Rosa needs hot chocolate in order to not become unemployed Rosa. There's only so much bullshit Captain Holt will tolerate. She might even take it somewhere quiet and sprinkle marshmallows into it. It's her secret ritual and no one can know about it – a girl has an image to maintain, after all.

Except she can't find them. The little packet of marshmallows isn't in the back of her cupboard, tucked away behind the strips of dried jerky and underneath the unopened packet of coffee. Rosa grits her teeth in a snarl, ready to howl her displeasure.

"Looking for these, Rosa?"

The one and only Gina Linetti is leaning casually against the sideboard, mug of coffee in one hand and bag of marshmallows in the other. Rosa hadn't even heard her come in. She takes a moment to admire the fit of Gina's skinny jeans – the woman has nice calves and Rosa is definitely a leg girl – before she lunges across the room to snatch the bag out of Gina's hand. She's fast, but not fast enough.

"Oh no no no. It's not going to be that easy, Rosa my darling." Gina taunts her. "If you want these," she rustles the bag and pops a little pink marshmallow into her mouth, "you're going to have to give me something."

"What do you want, Gina?" Rosa growls. "And for God's sake lower your voice."

"I want to borrow your motorbike."

"No." There's no question about it – Gina is not borrowing her bike. That's her pride and joy and Gina Linetti's life is a bit of a train wreck (I mean, who get's engaged eight times? **Who**?) so Rosa doesn't have much faith in her driving abilities.

Gina chuckles. "Au contraire. I have a bad girl to impress and rocking up on your bike will do just the trick." She pauses thoughtfully. "What's it Terr-bear says? Gina Linetti takes bad boys to jail and bad girls to bed."

Rosa leans forward and snatches her wrist. "You cannot borrow my bike. Pick. Something. Else."

Gina looks unaffected by her predatory tone. Rosa wonders when that happened, when her dark looks and darker tone stopped making Gina pause in her step, when she stopped rethinking her words around Rosa. Rosa gets a thrill from intimidating people, but a little part of her is getting a kick from someone not backing down and staring her in the eyes.

"Just gimme your leather jacket and helmet. It's not like I can ride the thing anyway." Gina taps away on her phone like she already knows what Rosa is going to say. Rosa has a face like thunder but she also knows that she can spare a few clothes to stop the squad from finding out that angry Rosa consumes cherry pink marshmallows by the pound.

"Done."

Rosa sprinkles a small handful of marshmallows into her hot chocolate before stuffing the bag back into the depths of the cupboard. She'll come back later to stick a knife and a threatening note in there too, just for good measure. You can never be too safe.

"How did you even know?"

"Rosa, sweet Rosa." Gina sighs dramatically and looks at her phone. "I know everything." She cackles, sounding a little bit like she's been possessed by the spirit of a maniacal Emperor, and glides out. Rosa watches her go. Maybe her gaze lingers for just a little bit too long on the length of her legs. Maybe.

When she gets back to her desk she's considerably calmer and ready to face the thing that set her off in first place. The WiFi is working at a snail's pace. A drugged up snail's pace. A snail that's had a few puffs and now can't be arsed to go anywhere. She can't even open the case files, that's how slow it's going. Which means two things: one, Rosa Diaz can't work on her case, and two, she can't procrastinate either because the goddamn Internet isn't bloody working.

Rosa takes a deep breath. And bloody Gina and her bloody meddling and her arsing favours. Then she takes one more look at the small spinning icon on her computer and grabs her jacket.

"Field work." She mutters to Terry on the way out. And by field work she means cruising around her bike for a few hours. Just her, the wind in her hair, and the open road.

By the time she returns to the precinct her thoughts are calm and she's eating a delicious flapjack, which she alternates with sips of green tea. It's refreshing and good for you! But maybe she wrote coffee on the cup just so she wouldn't be judged for her beverage preferences today.

All in all, Rosa Diaz is the picture of serenity as she wafts back into the office, only a few hours left on her shift.

Rosa stops dead in the middle of the precinct. She puts her tea and her flapjack carefully down on Amy's desk (Peralta's was closer but she knew he'd eat her food and judge her tea before she could get a glare out) and withdrew a knife from her boot.

"Who the fuck are you?"

There's a man – a boy really – sitting at her desk and tapping away on her computer. He's wearing a casual t-shirt that has "Say No …. to voting" across the chest. No one sits at Rosa's desk whilst it's her shift – she has enough trouble with the night shift dickbag shaving and getting hairs in the keyboard. Terry jumps up from his desk to intercept her, but Rosa is too quick and already has her hand on the boy's chest, bunching up his shirt.

"Wassup." The idiot says, looking nonchalant.

"DANG, GIRL." Gina appears, as if from nowhere. Her hands are doing something dramatic and bizarre. "THIS. IS. SAVANT." She punctuates her words with a dance move. It looks stupid. "DO. NOT. STAB. HIM."

"Yah. I'm the new IT guy." He pries Rosa's loosening fingers off of his shirt. "Ms. Linetti said I should look at your computer first, try and get the speed up and all that. Not that you have much stuff on here." He glances over at Hitchcock and Scully. Rosa doesn't want to think about what kind of creepy shit they might have on their desktops.

"Oh. Alright." She slips the knife back into her boot. "Carry on."

Rosa's in the break room, finishing off her green tea, crumbs of flapjack around her mouth when Terry struts in.

"Met Savant then?"

"Yeah."

"Please don't kill him. Me and Gina interviewed a whole bunch of people but none of them were a good fit.

Rosa raises an eyebrow. "Gina helped you interview people."

"Yeah." Terry shuffles over to the fridge, probably to hunt for more yoghurt. "Her methods were kinda crazy. But Terry was impressed. She seemed proper into making sure we had someone who wouldn't freak when you started threatening them with knives."

Well, she'd certainly managed that. Rosa smiles to herself. Later in the evening, she replays the events of the day in her head.

Wait. Gina Linetti takes bad boys to jail and bad girls to bed? Huh. For some reason that throwaway comment sticks in her head for the rest of the week.

* * *

Hope you guys enjoyed this. Thought the first chapter was lacking in angry rosa, so here's some :)

Thanks again for reading x


	3. you're dynamite, girl

**Three - you're dynamite, girl & you're blowing my life apart **

Rosa Diaz owns a dozen knives, a longsword, nunchucks, throwing stars, a blowpipe, a long bow with half a dozen decent arrows, and more than one axe. It's a significant armoury without even counting the guns and tasers she has for legitimate police reasons.

Gina Linetti barely even has a functioning lock on her door. It's not that she doesn't care about her personal safety, it's just that her landlord is an inconsiderate and lazy git who has been promising to install better security for months. That's taking him forever, but when it comes to charging Gina for unauthorised modifications to her apartment, he's quick as a flash.

So it's really no surprise that Gina gets robbed. Neither is it any surprise when she completely ignores the advice that Rosa and Amy give her (well, it was mostly Amy's advice), badgers the two of them incessantly about the dead-end case, and then files an official civilian complaint to boot. Rosa really does wonder where this woman gets all her dramatic energy. It's exhausting just watching her.

"This is a miscarriage of justice." They're in Captain Holt's office, Rosa and Amy sitting across from Holt behind his desk, Gina of the small sofa behind them. Holt's chewing them out but Rosa's just staring vacantly at the wall behind him, wondering when this became her life.

Gina stands up dramatically. "I'm gonna haunt your dreams." It's a classic Gina exit: a swift departure, a punchy and vaguely threatening one-liner, and it leaves Rosa's heart beating just a little bit faster.

You already do. The thought crosses Rosa's mind before she has a chance to stop it. Wait, what? She hadn't dreamt about Gina, had she? Suddenly Rosa isn't so sure – she's not that good at remembering her dreams and most of them just involve fights – and her brain is going a million-miles-an-hour and it's making her glare. Amy and Captain Holt are both looking at her oddly.

"I've got some real work to do." Rosa spits out, stalking back to her desk and her nice safe case files. It's not the idea of potentially have had sexual dreams about women that has sent Rosa's mind spinning out of orbit – she's had plenty of those – but they're normally about celebrities. Not people that she knows. Not someone that she sees virtually every day.

This is not going to happen. Rosa Diaz is very firmly in control of her emotions and God help anyone who tries to claim otherwise. I am not going to fall for that idiotic, infuriating, gorgeous woman.

Rosa and Amy are dragged into Holt's office again.

"She is scared." Captain Holt is saying, carefully enunciating each word and leaning over his desk for effect. It's sweet how much he obviously cares for Gina, for everyone in this precinct. Rosa leans back in her chair as Amy gets indignantly worked up.

"She's not scared! With all due respect, sir, Gina has no feelings." Rosa isn't quite sure about that. Gina has too many feelings, all of them bubbling to the surface and so obviously on display. She's like an emotional bomb, about to go off 24/7, or a soap opera personified.

"She once said the best comedy of all time was The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo." Rosa interjects.

Holt leans back, his hands folding in his lap. "Well, think about how she's been acting." Rosa does think: she thinks about how Gina has been approaching her and Amy more frequently ever since the arrest. She thinks about how Gina had hired a PI – at the time Rosa had thought that it had been part of another one of her digs at the detectives of the nine nine, but now she isn't so sure.

Gina always looked tough. Always had a quick word and a sharp tongue and never took shit from anyone, but that didn't mean she couldn't be soft on the inside. Really far inside.

"Her home doesn't feel safe anymore. If someone broke into your apartment, and you weren't cops, would you be scared?"

Yes. In a manner of speaking, Rosa would be scared. Her heart would be thumping, her pulse would be raised, but she'd have a knife or gun in her hand and she'd be ready to protect herself. She'd seen so much of herself in Gina – this external appearance of toughness – that she'd thought that Gina would react the same way as her. Which would be to buy a bunch of locks and move house.

But Amy is the sympathetic and introspective one in this odd little meeting. Rosa is the sullen antagonistic one and so she leans forward a bit. "Depends. How many guns do I still have hidden?"

"None."

"Do I still have my knife? Nunchucks? Axe?" With every word Amy sits a little higher and draws a little further away from where Rosa slouches. "Do I still have my throwing stars?"

Rosa and Holt stare at each other.

"What kind of woman doesn't have an axe?"

It's a good Rosa Diaz exit: a punchy one liner with a bit of a threat to it. But it's also a sentiment Rosa vehemently believes in – every woman should be able to protect herself and provide for herself in a deserted cabin in the woods. An axe fulfils both of those functions. That's why when Amy and Rosa deck out Gina's apartment in better security gear she loiters behind Amy for a minute.

It certainly isn't to thank Gina for her weird choice of grateful gift – stretchy bodysuits are not her kind of thing at all.

"Here." Rosa puts an axe on Gina's table. It's a small one but the blade is sharp.

"Damn Rosa." Gina takes a small step back, eyebrows looking like they're trying to chase her hairline. "Did you break into my apartment?" Her eyes widen. "Are you here to finish the job?"

"What? No." Rosa can never really tell when Gina is being serious. "It's for you. Learn how to use it properly. Every woman should have an axe."

'Didn't know you cared." Gina smiles at her and it's soft and makes her face light up. It's totally different from the kind of smile she has when she successfully pulls off a prank, like when she got the whole precinct to drink cement. It looks vulnerable and honest.

Rosa shrugs awkwardly and picks up her bag.

"I do." She says gruffly as she walks out.

It's probably the most openly emotional Rosa has ever been around Gina.

Days pass and Rosa thinks that maybe there is something here, something between her and Gina that could be worth exploring. One day Gina goes to a fancy coffee shop to buy something laced with caramel and pumped full of cream, but also comes back with a chamomile tea for Rosa, who thanks her softly, a blush threatening to bloom on her cheeks

But then weeks and months are passing and the seasons are changing and Rosa never seems to be able to sort out her emotions enough to find the right thing to say to Gina.

And then it's all too late because Gina is standing on a table declaring her sexual relationship with Charles Boyle, of all people, and it feels like one of Rosa's many knives has been scraped across her heart.

It's stupid, of course. Rosa is 99% sure that Gina is entirely straight and even if she wasn't, it never ends well to date people at work. Rosa knows all this and more and it still doesn't stop her stupid little heart from feeling a pang of hope when the whole Gina/Charles thing blows entirely over and Charles becomes weirdly, obsessively fixated on the next woman that he goes on a date with.

Which makes it that much worse when the next knife is driven straight through her chest in the form of Madeline Wuntch. She tears through the department like a tornado armed with a spear. Maybe Rosa could actually find something to respect in Wuntch's tenacity and dedication to the destruction of Holt's career if only for two facts:

(i) Captain Holt is the best police Captain that Rosa has ever served under

(ii) Holt is taking Gina with him to Public Relations

Somehow the second feels more devastating than the first.

Gina collects her belongings from the precinct. On her way out several confetti cannons go off, showering the entire room in bits of paper and glitter and she's convinced Savant to change and lock all the computer backgrounds to different photos of Gina. It's a classic Gina Linetti exit, except this time it's lacking the quip.

Right by the door Gina pauses and grabs Rosa's right hand. She touches Rosa's cheek gently with her right hand and looks her right in the eye.

"Don't miss me too much."

It's no different really to the farewells she gave the rest of the precinct – dramatic and overly affectionate – but it makes Rosa go straight to the secret bathroom that her and Gina had shared and sit down on the fancy cushions.

"I think I might."


	4. if this feeling flows both ways

**Four - if this feeling flows both ways (sad to see you go)**

Rosa Diaz doesn't keep a phone longer than a month. This means that she doesn't keep any phone numbers for longer than a month, other than those that she really needs for work purposes. Gina Linetti doesn't ever do any work, which means that Rosa has never had her number. Once Gina left with Holt for the Public Relations officethere wasn't an opportunity to get it.

Rosa is seriously beginning to rethink this whole phone policy, particularly where it concerns glorious dynamite women. As they say, distance makes the heart grow fonder and Rosa's heart seems to be nurturing a fully blossoming crush.

It's been several months since Gina and Holt's sudden exit and hardly a hair has been glimpsed of either of them. Gina has been doing a stellar job of protecting Holt's reputation from Wuntch and Rosa has being keeping her head down and doing some serious grafting at work. Every time she thinks of Gina she punishes herself by doing another bit of paperwork; Rosa realises that she might have an actual problem when Amy comes over to ask her for efficient document filing tips.

Rosa tries to distract herself by going on a string of Tinder dates (her profile has exactly two pictures: one of her motorbike and the other a far-out shot of Rosa rock climbing in Yosemite. The description is simply Jake's favourite Die Hard quote. She still manages to go on three dates a week for a month) that never get past the third drink. The only one with any potential was Marcus and he breaks up with her citing their lack of spark, when really he means that when they kiss Rosa's head is clearly somewhere else. On someone else.

It turns out that the best way to keep your mind busy, however, is simply to have a real dickhead of a boss. The Vulture stands at the head of the briefing room, sloppily dressed and taking the piss out of Peralta. Normally Rosa would take a great deal of pleasure in witnessing this, but it's at the cost of Pembroke taking away all of her decent cases.

"Well it looks like a pretty fat file for a dunker." The Vulture eyes up the hefty pile of paper of Jake's desk. "Look, I'm gonna keep it real simple for you. We only solve misdemeanours, wieners. Say it."

He looks at the room expectantly. Rosa glares straight ahead whilst tracing "fuck off, wanker" on the desk with her finger, her second small act of disobedience after keeping her mouth shut. The rest of the room chants along, annoyed but downtrodden.

"We only solve misdemeanours, wieners."

"Congratulations. You just called yourselves wieners." He struts out of the room like an oversized, well, vulture. "Dismissed."

Rosa stomps back to her desk and channels all of her energy into loathing the Vulture; she's discovered recently that if you spend all of your time hating someone with every fibre of your being, it keeps your mind off of other things. Like absentmindedly daydreaming that she'll turn around to see Gina at her desk, bopping along to the blaring sound of some obnoxious chart-topper. Or worse, imagining getting home from a long day at work, unlocking her flat door, dumping her stuff on the counter and going into the bathroom to wipe off the day's makeup only to find Gina taking a bath, the scent of rose petals in the air and bubbles everywhere, her long legs propped up –

She's doing it again. **Goddamnit**. Rosa hastily cuts off that line of thought by picking up the first three-page case on her desk, the tragic and deeply harrowing tale of a thirteen year old caught spraying racist graffiti on bus stops. When Pembroke calls her and Amy into his office to ramble on about his stupid birthday, it's almost a relief.

"I've got something real special for the two of you." Amy, bless her heart, looks like an eager puppy, ready to sink her teeth into some real detective work. Rosa knows better. "I need you to throw me a party, alright? Make it epic, surprise me."

As Amy gets indignant, Rosa just thinks that she could do with letting her hair down and throwing back a few shots. Maybe I should give that women's only bar down the road another chance. That girl from last week might be there again. She's lost in pleasant memories of an auburn-headed young woman with soft eyes and softer hands, smiling at her in the darkness of the club.

"Unbelievable. What a waste of time!"

"Disagree." Rosa slams her coffee mug down on the table. A spark lights behind her eyes. "This is an amazing use of time."

Surprisingly, it turns out to be just that. Amy can be a good laugh when she stops letting the rules define her, Rosa muses as the two of them sit together at a small table in a dirty bar listening to some truly terrible music. They laugh together as the Vulture's tearaway pants get stuck and Rosa smiles at Amy as they down more drinks.

"Next time I want to hurt someone, I'm coming straight to you." Rosa tips her beer to Amy, admiring Amy's shoulders in that dress. She sure as hell isn't making the mistake of nursing a crush on another co-worker and Rosa thinks she'd have a breakdown within three days of living with Amy Santiago, but that doesn't mean she can't enjoy a little bit of light flirting.

"Aw, that's the nicest thing you've ever said to me."

Rosa laughs, grabs Amy's hand and drags her, despite Amy's protests, onto the dance floor to groove to the truly appalling song entitled "Mom's in the Shower".

There's a new spring in Rosa's step when she saunters into work the next day, high on the feeling of having had a great night out - she's had two hours of sleep and the beat of the dance floor is still pounding in her veins, and that always puts a little glint in her eye. Rosa has just handed a cup of coffee to a very appreciative and droopy-eyed Amy when the doors of the lift rumble open to reveal the one and only Captain Raymond Holt.

"Hello squad. Good news. The Vulture is out and I'm back."

The squad laughs and applauds, but whilst Rosa is happy to see Holt, her eyes are flitting around the room, lingering on the lift as though the small metal box could be hiding another person in there.

"Wait, where's Gina?" Boyle voices the question that Rosa wants to ask.

Cap under his arm, Holt does his approximation of a smile. "She wanted to make a proper entrance."

Right on cue, confetti explodes. It's a classic Gina Linetti entrance: colourful, bold, and makes Rosa's heart tick just a little bit faster. It also comes with a finger click, a phone in hand, and the one liner, "Or was I never really gone?" Rosa smiles harder than she has in weeks.

Play it cool Rosa. Ice cool. Twenty minutes after Gina's reappearance, Rosa saunters over to her desk to say hi. Just ask her how Public Relations was, make a crack about Wuntch, just say something casual. Gina sets down her phone on the table with a click as Rosa gets closer, some sort of light and witty one-liner on her lips. Gina stands up daintily and put one hand on the wooden surface and the other on Rosa's shoulder. She leans in close, her breath huffing across Rosa's cheek.

"I wore my extra tight pants for you."

Gina winks and wanders off to the kitchen showing off the legs in question, leaving Rosa standing there wide-eyed.


	5. I could hear the world outside

**Five - I could hear the world outside calling me ( and heaven knows how hard I tried)**

It's the night of the fourth Halloween competition. The competitive buzz is humming in Rosa's veins, the thrill of the fight is singing in her head, and the hunt for glory is glimmering in her eyes. She's ready to win this thing. And also maybe to snag a girl along the way; Rosa's discovered the trophy that Holt had ordered for this year's competition and put in a little order of her own: a little stick-on engraving to go over the bit that says "the ultimate detective/genius" that reads "Gina Linetti: will you go on a date with me?".

Rosa's going to present it to her once she's claimed her victory. It sounded romantic in her head. Now it sounds kinda lame. But Rosa's never professed to be an expert on this kind of crap and it's probably the thought that counts.

"Heists are dumb," mocks Terry as he strides out of the room, files tucked under his beefy arms.

Peralta clearly believes that there's something fishy going on there, but Peralta is clearly a bit of an idiot. Rosa loves him anyway.

"I choose Rosa." Amy announces, looking smug. She'd better look smug, Rosa is going to be a kick-ass heist partner and then she's going to win over the girl of her dreams – literally of her dreams. There's been more than one night where Rosa had woken up with wide eyes and a pounding heart. It's becoming a happy reoccurrence.

"Dope." Rosa flashes Santiago a wink and gives her casual thumbs up. There's some more male posturing and then Gina is on Peralta's team. Perfect. Everything is going to plan and Rosa Diaz is a genius.

And then Gina Linetti rollerskates into a wall and there's blood everywhere and Rosa's heart feels like it's in her mouth. Unlike Gina's teeth, which are on the floor. Everyone freezes as they watch on in horror at this casualty of the heist war and then Peralta's the first one to react.

"Oh my god, Gina, are you okay?"

She's sitting up and still conscious, so there's probably not that much wrong but Rosa is stuck inside a small room with Santiago – a room that Gina herself had locked Rosa in, she'll admire the ingenuity of the plot later - when every bit of her body is yearning to do a Holt and smash the window with a fire extinguisher and run her hands over every inch of Gina to check she's okay. But Rosa's a professional and she isn't about to destroy a window. Also her feet seem to be frozen to the floor.

Gina turns around and smiles a bloody, toothless smile. Blood drips horrifyingly from her lips.

"It's cool," she slurs. "I'm fine." Rosa's eyes enlarge as she takes in the two missing front teeth. "Ain't no thang."

"Totally, girl! You look good!" Peralta grimaces encouragingly.

She does not look good. That becomes abundantly clear as Holt scoops Gina up and lays her gently on the couch in the break room. Freed from the conference room, Rosa sits by Gina's feet, arm draped casually over her leg. Her wrist brushes the skin of Gina's ankle and that tiny bit of contact simultaneously makes her heart pick up and her head calm down.

Reluctantly, Rosa agrees to continue with the heist. Gina Linetti is a young, strong, independent woman who is clearly getting that UberSelect to the dentist all by herself and ain't no woman gonna stop her. Besides Rosa still might be able to salvage some sort of romantic gesture out of this. Maybe she can present her altered trophy to Gina after she's had her teeth put back in or whatever dentist's do in this kind of messed up scenario.

Turns out they've all been played. The lights in the interrogation room turn off and the true mastermind behind the heist is revealed, gloating behind the window with the real trophy clutched in her hands. Rosa is half impressed, half horrified as Gina is clearly still missing two teeth and dang is that some serious commitment to one-upping them.

"It was all me." She's even still got the lisp. It's a little bit adorable. "False teeth, fake blooood."

Damn she's good. There's no space now for Rosa's grand gesture, no time even for her to congratulate Gina on her cunning victory, to brush their hands together and whisper her now ruined plan in Gina's ear. She might've tried, but that damn window was in the way and when they all get out of the cell the moment has clearly passed and she is swept along to the nearest bar.

Rosa does shots in Gina's honour as they toast the Nine Nine's ultimate human slash genius. Her fingers clutch the tiny magnetic engraved plaque in her pocket and her eyes admire Gina's figure, adorned with a glitzy children's crown and a fake-fur cape. The universe says not today and Rosa respects the universe. Today the universe says do more shots and Rosa obeys.

She respects the universe less when Gina steps off the road into the path of a bus. This woman has been transferred and hospitalised twice (well, once, seeing as Gina never actually went to the dentist) and what will it take for Rosa to get her ass in gear? Seriously? Rosa feels sick to her stomach that it has taken her so much, for them to have been through so much, for her to gather up her courage enough to ask a woman on a goddamn date. It's not rocket science. It's the simple opening of a mouth and the speaking of words; never in her life has Rosa Diaz spent so long trying to do such a simple thing.

She's not even there to see the accident. The first Rosa hears of it is when she answers a call from Boyle. She thinks it's some creepy pervert from the heavy breathing coming down the line and the distinct lack of words.

"Boyle? What the fuck?" She swears into the phone, wondering what the hell kind of game he's playing at.

"Rosa." There's an awkward pause as Boyle tries to put his words together into an intelligible human sentence. "Gina, accident, bus, texting. Hospital."

"Fuck." She hangs up immediately and runs.

Rosa doesn't even stop to grab her helmet before jumping on her bike and cutting a lane of traffic to get to the hospital. They don't let her in – family only. The squad sits outside the ward on uncomfortable plastic seats as they wait to hear the news, any news. She doesn't wonder until later why Boyle called her, of all the squad, first. Later she chalks it down to his creepy sense of intuition, given all the "subtle" shoulder nudges, the sympathetic back pats, and vaguely encouraging yet a little bit weird speeches he gives her.

"Two months ago, Gina Linetti was hit by a bus," reads Holt, glasses perching on the end of his nose. "And the brightest star in the cosmos was extinguished. But today, like a phoenix from the ashes, she rises to vanquish…" Holt's voice trails off as he flicks through the pile of paper and realises just how long this speech of Gina's is. "Gina's doctor said it was okay for her to come back to work today."

It's a tragedy of the universe that when Gina finally gets back to the Nine Nine she ignores Rosa. Well, she's not ignoring her exactly but there's no more of those special little gestures that Gina was making. Obviously it would be kind of hard, given that Gina can't really walk properly, yet there's definitely something fishy going on. Gina won't accept Rosa's gifts of coffee, letting them go cold on the desk and pretending that she forgot about it, and she doesn't even look twice when Rosa wears her most outrageously tight pants.

Before Rosa can really figure out what's going on, before she manages to corner Gina because she has to wait until she's out of the body casts before doing that (I mean, come on, you can't forcibly corner someone who literally can't run away, even in the name of love), somehow she's standing on trial in a courtroom and jail time is looking like a definite, terrifying possibility.

So much for romantic opportunities.

* * *

I only have one chapter left to write, so that should come within the next few days. Hope you enjoyed my little fic.


	6. truth of what you are

**And One – the truth of what you are & what you want to be**

Rosa Diaz knows a great many things. One of those things is that Gina Linetti has fallen, tripped, and tumbled all the way into Rosa's heart. Another is that she wants Gina to fall, trip, and tumble into her pants. She needs Gina to know without a shadow of a doubt that Rosa is (i) a definite admirer of women, (ii) a definite admirer of one specific woman. So for any pant-tumbling to even conceivably happen, she needs to come out of the closet. After she's gotten out of prison.

_Fuck._

Turns out getting out of prison is the easy part, especially when you've got the Nine Nine at your back. But this time, this time god fucking damnit, Rosa is not letting her moment get away from her. It starts with a conversation with Boyle when they're on a wild goose chase/road trip across the country.

"So, who you got your eye on?" Boyle drifts over to her at the funeral for their old C.O. Rosa thinks he's trying to look elegant and suave, but he's more like a chicken with a dodgy limp.

"What?" Rosa turns around, drink in hand. There's no _way _he's figured this one out.

"You haven't dated anyone since you broke up with Pimento." Boyle gesticulates emphatically with his hand, trying to convey how dire he found this situation. It was strangely touching. "And funerals are a meat market!" Right back to being a weirdo.

Rosa scowls and makes a swift retreat, but the conversation plants a seed of a plan in her mind. Rosa knows that Charles Boyle is more intuitive than he looks. Yeah, he's weirdly obsessive and a more than a bit bizarre, but he's also loving and devoted and got an eye for romance. In short, she decides, Charles Boyle is Rosa Diaz's shortest route to being an out and proud bisexual to the Nine Nine.

The plan: come out to Boyle. Use Boyle to come out to Jake. Use Jake to come out to her parents. Throw a coming out party. Confess to Gina. Wild, passionate love-making. Hopefully.

She briefly considers getting a friend to phone her and have her pretend to be Rosa's girlfriend somewhere that Boyle can overhear. It would probably work, but Rosa is tired of hiding. Tired of being passive and sneaky and not getting things done. Time and time again she has waited for the right moment, only to have her chance snatched away from her. She was coming to realise that the right moment didn't exist. There was only now and the chances you could seize.

Rosa Diaz was ready to seize every fucking chance she could get her hands on.

She loiters upstairs, trying to ignore the sounds Becca Boyle is making in the bathroom, knowing that Charles will seek her out. He's got a nose for secrets like some sort of privacy-violating bloodhound.

"Just bringing you some water." He hands her a glass. He's the only person Rosa knows whose eyes actually twinkle. She had always thought that was just a line from crappy romance novels, but no. Rosa sighs.

She thinks of Gina. Gina laughing in the precinct. Gina sitting across from her at the bar, smiling like there's something only she knows. Gina asking Rosa to give her axe-wielding tips. Gina in a short skirt and high heels, threatening to batter some guy who catcalled her. Gina walking and texting and showing up to work in joggers, looking like she'd just rolled out of bed and somehow still beautiful. _Gina, Gina, Gina_. Gina's lips on hers. Gina's hip under Rosa's hand. _Gina, Gina, Gina. _Her mind sings with the promise of what could be.

"Charles, I'm bisexual." He gawps at her. "I like women." She clarifies quickly. "And I need your help."

Those words are like magic to Charles Boyle.

"Oh, that's great! Rosa!" His face is making an expression that is an odd mashup of absolutely delighted and like Rosa had slapped him with a rotten hunk of salmon. She so desperately wants this conversation to be over.

"Great. We'll talk later."

Rosa stalks down the stairs. They don't get an opportunity to speak properly again until they're in the bar back in New York, celebrating making it to Holt's Commissioner interview on time. She slides into the seat next to Charles.

"I want to come out to the precinct." She sips her drink, trying to act nonchalant and like her heart isn't racing a million miles an hour. "But I don't want it to be like this big thing. I want it to be casual. I need your ideas."

She stares straight ahead, not looking at Boyle. You could cut the awkwardness with a knife. This is so contrary to Rosa's nature, this willingly opening up to others, the sharing of the most intimate details about who she is and what she wants to become. She feels bare. Naked. Like the armour she normally wore – the blank face, the motorbike, the snappy comebacks – has fallen away. Not that it was armour, exactly. Those things are who Rosa is too, but she is done with who she is stopping her from getting what she wants.

"Rosa," her name falls from Charles' lips and it jerks her back into the present. "This is simple." He turns awkwardly in the chair so he's looking into her eyes. He takes her hand. She lets him. "You just need to show them who you are."

And so she does.

"Anything else?" Holt stands sternly at the front of the meeting room, gazing out over his squad. _Now or never. _

"Uh, yes." Rosa forces herself to stand. Her fingers are trembling. Boyle gives her a supportive nod. "Something I'd like to say. I'm a pretty private person so this is kinda hard for me, but here we go." She sets her shoulders and clenches her fists, like she's sixteen again and squaring up in a boxing ring for the first time, waiting for the bell to sound so she can let fly. "I'm bisexual. Alright. I will accept questions on this matter for the next minute."

She recruits Jake to her cause while they're both in the dark filing room. All the best plots begin in a dark room with plenty of spaces to stash a body, Rosa thinks approvingly. He helps her to come out to her parents. It doesn't exactly go perfectly – there were tears and sleep-lost nights, an aching gap in Rosa's chest where her love for her family rests. But Rosa feels like a weight has been lifted from her shoulders. Now there's only one person left, one person who isn't her parents and who wasn't in that meeting room. No doubt Gina, who has her ear so close to the ground Rosa is surprised that it hasn't become permanently attached, has already heard through the gossip vine. But this is something Rosa _needs _to say to her face.

The Nine Nine crowds around her apartment door, games and drinks clutched in their hands. She'll never admit it, but Rosa's heart swells with the joy of it. They trickle in through her door. Gina waits until last, just outside the apartment. Rosa steps outside to stop her from entering and the door clicks shut behind her.

Gina steps back to give her space and shoots her a coy smile. Her eyelashes flutter back and Rosa thinks _she is the most beautiful woman alive. _She thinks _this was all worth it, even if she says no_. She thinks _I should have done this days and months and years ago._

Rosa steps forwards and rehearsed words rise up in her throat. They're cut off by a delicate finger on her lips. Gina is suddenly so very close. There's hands rests gently on Rosa's arms (the gesture is close enough to be intimate, yet still not so bold as to make Rosa absolutely certain) and her heart skips a beat. Gina hugs her and her breath rushes past Rosa's ear.

"You know, in another lifetime you and I would have made a hot ass couple." Gina laughs as she says it, but somehow her voice is still seductive.

It's Gina's arms wrapped all around her that finally gives Rosa the strength to speak the words that have been on the tip of her tongue for months.

"What's wrong with this lifetime?" She breathes the words into Gina's hair. _Dang_, she thinks, _that was actually a pretty smooth line._

Gina's fingers relax and she moves out of the hug. Rosa tenses up, certain she's about to get a rejection and she's already preparing her stone-wall face. Maybe she can play this off as a flirtatious joke.

"Damn." Gina's hand floats to Rosa's hips, resting there with a feather light touch. "Get it girl."

And so Rosa does. She flutters her eyelashes closed because she's about ninety percent certain that was an invitation but doesn't want to risk seeing the look on Gina's face if she's somehow horribly misread the situation. She slides a hand up Gina's side and moves in slowly, pressing her lips softly to Gina's and Gina presses back.

Rosa finally has what she wants in her grasp, her fingers running through untamed hair, a name on her lips and her breath stolen from her lungs and she _doesn't want to wait a second longer, goddamnit. _She's kissing Gina like she's running out of air, like there's no one else in the world and it's so passionate but also so soft, and Rosa doesn't want to come up to breathe. But Gina, as she so often does in life, has other ideas. She pulls backwards with only a small hitch to her breath to betray the intensity of the kiss.

Rosa is ready to march into her flat, Gina in tow, and tell everyone in there "thanks very much, but please fuck off so I can do the dirty". Gina has a hand on Rosa's arm, stopping her from doing that very thing, and she just smiles at Rosa, soft and warm and beautiful. Inside, Rosa melts just a little bit more.

"I want you." Gina breathes across Rosa's face. The words are teasing and exciting but her tone is controlled and gentle. "But I want to do this right."

"Damn 'right'. Damn 'right' to hell." Rosa huffs back. She's suddenly a little less pleased that Gina doesn't find her quite so intimidating these days.

"I want to take you to dinner." Gina carries on talking like she hasn't even heard Rosa speak. She puts her fingers on Rosa's cheek and trails her hand slowly down her neck. Rosa breathes in, sharply. "I want." The fingers curl just under Rosa's ear. "To wine." A thumb brushes her collarbone. "And." Gina's fingers skate just under the edge of Rosa's shirt. "Dine you."

Gina removes her hand and Rosa lets her head roll back, thunking into the wall behind her with a load groan. Gina just smiles coyly. She's knows _exactly _what effect she's having.

"Fiiiiine."

They rejoin the party, Gina looking cool, calm, and collected, Rosa looking flushed with twitching fingers. They smile and laugh and relax with their colleagues, and if Rosa keeps sneaking touches every time she passes Gina then, well, who would blame her?

She sips at her glass of red wine and lets the pleasure of the evening rush over her. The party ends and Gina stays behind after Rosa has thanked all her guests. She lingers for just a moment at the door, long enough to cup Rosa's cheek and kiss her lightly. It feels like a promise.

Rosa is at work the next day, tapping away diligently on her computer, when a shadow falls over her desk. It's Gina. She's over two hours late to work (when is she not?) and she's holding the most enormous bouquet of flowers that Rosa has ever seen.

"Rosa Diaz," the voice behind the towering flowers booms out, loud enough for the entire precinct to hear. "Will you do me the honour of going to dinner with me?" Gina sets the flowers down carefully on the desk so that her face is visible.

Rosa smiles up at the most beautiful, the most vibrant, and the bravest woman she has ever known.

"It would be the greatest honour of my life, Gina Linetti."

* * *

First of all, thank you so much to everyone that has read and enjoyed my little fic. Extra special thanks to those that have favourited or left encouraging reviews! This was my first B99 fic, but I hope it will not be my last. x


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